1. Field of the invention
The present invention concerns a support and guide device for cables carrying electrical or light signals. The device is particularly intended to be used in telecommunication installations comprising cabinets or racks fitted with a plurality of subracks equipped with a number of removable printed circuit boards.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In such installations some connections are made via the subrack front panel and at least some circuit boards are connected to electrical or optical cables by means of connectors in two separable parts one of which is fixed to a front panel and connected to the respective circuit board and the other of which is fixed to the end of a cable carrying signals from the exterior to the board in question or from the board to the exterior.
In the places where telecommunication installations are housed, signal cables may be routed in trenches in the floor, on racks at ceiling height and in trunking running along the walls. The cabinets or racks usually receive cables in the form of bundles guided in vertical trunking from which groups of cables to feed the various subracks in the cabinet or rack are brought out at the same level as the subrack. A relatively large number of cables feeds each subrack, possibly several dozen.
During installation and also during subsequent conversion and adaptation of telecommunication installations it is usually necessary to carry out a large number of cable connection and disconnection operations and circuit board insertion and removal operations as well as to carry out work on circuit boards disposed in a subrack that is on its own or disposed above or below another subrack which may or may not be fitted with circuit boards already. During these operations a large number of cables and connectors are disconnected, pending connection, and this often causes problems of lack of space and of identifying connectors, impeding work on the circuit boards and entailing a non-negligible risk of wrong connections.
The individual conductor elements of the cables are relatively fragile, especially in the case of optical fibers, so that there is a significant risk of these elements being damaged or broken if they change direction with too small a radius of curvature, especially if the cables become tangled during the various operations carried out when installing or converting equipment.
One object of the invention is to provide a solution to the above-mentioned problems and to reduce the above-mentioned risks, in particular by improving the routing of cables between the trunking feeding the cabinets or racks and the front panels of the circuit boards, by ensuring good identification of the cables and good indexing of the connecting elements, and also by providing temporary attachment members whereby unplugged connector elements can be stowed in clearly defined waiting positions where they do not impede the connection and disconnection of other connectors or work on the circuit boards, although these elements can be located and identified correctly when they are to be plugged in, and further by guiding cables where they enter or leave the feed trunking with a radius of curvature that is always greater than the permissible lower limit.